Original Message:
Re: Marriott Vacation Club "Destinations" - What I Like and What I've Done (by Jean F.):
Michaeld, I would undoubtedly agree with you that buying points is more expensive. However, my point that I dispute with you is that for those of us who are owners of weeks prior to June 2010 and decided to join the points program, is a good deal for us. There are lot of advantages and we have not given up anything but aquired some additional flexibility. We have lost nothing but in my opinion gained. Nothing is ALL bad.
I am in agreement with Dennis. We own four properties 2 in Myrtle Beach,1 in Vegas, and 1 in Aruba. Both Vegas and Aruba are lock offs and so this means we can yearly make 6 weeks of top notch vacationing. We joined the points plan, but didn't buy the new points. We sometimes think that perhaps we should have in order to access new properties, but we are truly happy with what we've been able to do with Marriott and with Interval. What we have really enjoyed is losing all the blasted fees we used to have to pay. $75 to lock off,$109 to trade Marriott to Marriott through interval, and the list goes on. I think that Dennis is right in saying that it does give some extra flexibility to ownership. I also think that we as weeks owners aka Legacy Owners do have the best options. The points are too expensive now for us to think about buying, and we have liked what we are able to do with our properties. I also agree with what Michael said and the math didn't make sense to us either, so we didn't buy. But we have lots of properties we can turn into DP's if we want to check out short stays etc. What it comes right down to is: do what makes you happy. We thoroughly enjoy our properties and what we can do with them. We have never regretted the decision to be MVCI owners. I'd bet Dennis feels the same.